perhaps the best solution that could be found for their moral difficulties, that the father of gods and men was, like the humblest of his children, subject to the sway of an irresistible fate, against which he often might murmur in vain: this dogma was supprest or kept in the back ground, and on the other hand the paramount supremacy of Jupiter was brought prominently forward[1]. The popular mythology indeed still claimed unabated reverence, even from the most enlightened Greeks. But the quarrels of the gods, which had afforded so much entertainment to their simplehearted forefathers, were hushed on the tragic scene: and a unity of will was tacitly supposed to exist among the members of the Olympian family, which would have deprived Homer of his best machinery. The tendency of these changes was to transfer the functions of Destiny to Jupiter, and to represent all events as issuing from his will, and the good and evil that falls to the lot of mortals as dispensed by his hand. It is evident that, so far as this notion prevailed, the character of destiny was materially altered. It could no longer be considered as a mere brute force, a blind necessity working without consciousness of its means or its ends. The power indeed still remained, and was still mysterious in its nature, inevitable and irresistible in its operation; but it was now conceived to be under the direction of a sovereign mind, acting according to the rules of unerring justice. This being the case, though its proceedings might often be inscrutable to man, they would never be accidental or capricious.
How far these ideas had acquired clearness and consistency in the mind of Sophocles, it is impossible precisely and certainly to determine. But it seems indisputable that indications of them appear in his works, and it is interesting to observe the traces of their influence on his poetry. It has indeed been often supposed that some of his greatest masterpieces were founded on a totally different view of the subject from that just described: on the supposition that mankind were
- ↑ See Antigon. 600. τεὰν, Ζεῦ, δύνασιν τίς ἀνδρῶν ὑπερβασία κατάσχοι, τὰν οὔθ᾽ ὕπνος αἱρεῖ ποθ᾽ ὁ παντογήρως κ.τ.λ. Œd. C. 1035. ἰὼ παντάρχε θεῶν, παντόπτα Ζεὦ. El. 174. μέγας ἐν οὐρανῷ Ζεὺς, ὃς ἐφορᾷ πάντα καὶ κρατύνει. Œd. T. 897. ἀλλ᾽ ὠ κρατύνων, εἴπερ ὄρθ᾽ ἀκούνεις, Ζεῦ πάντ᾽ ανάσσων. The thought is still more forcibly expressed in Philoct. 979. Ζεῦς ἔσθ᾽, ἵν᾽ εἰδῇς, Ζεὺς ὁ τῆσδε γῆς κρατῶν, Ζεύς ᾦ δέδοκται ταῦθ᾽.
